page_title: Washington Harbour
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Washington Harbour / Critical reception / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the upper floors of the Washington Harbour office, retial, and luxury residential complex on the waterfront in the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., in the United States. This view showed the wide variety of architectural elements which architect Arthur Cotton Moore employed to make the complex visually intreesting.
context_page_description: Washington Harbour is a Class-A mixed-use development located at 3000 and 3050 K Street, N.W., in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The southern edge of the development borders the Potomac River on the Georgetown waterfront. Designed by Arthur Cotton Moore, the complex consists of two curved towers and three other buildings attached to them, all of which are in the Postmodern architectural style. The complex contains luxury condominia, offices, retail space, restaurants, and underground parking.
  Construction of the complex was preceded by a seven-year zoning and legal battle over the future of the Georgetown waterfront. This dispute led to the designation and development of a new national park, the Georgetown Waterfront Park. A two-year controversy over the design of the complex, which included accusations of malfeasance by a D.C. agency, followed. Construction began in November 1981, and was complete in June 1986. Critical reception of Washington Harbour was mixed, but the public quickly embraced it.
  Washington Harbour suffered significant management problems in its first two years, which led to the removal of one of its developers as property manager.
context_section_description: Architect Roger K. Lewis, writing for the Washington Post, generally praised the structure, calling it an "incredibl[y] diverse, complicated, at times overwhelming architectural collage". He called Moore's willingness to divide the complex with pedestrian walkways "a masterful stroke of urbanism" and praised its "architectural exuberance" — the way Moore fragmented the bulk of the buildings with recessed and projecting facades of widely different colors, materials, and styles. He also voiced strong approval for the way the complex was designed for wealthy tenants, and yet contained space for the public. However, he felt the building did not fit in with stylistically with the rest of Georgetown, even though Moore drew on the many architectural styles found there.
  Washington Post architectural critic Benjamin Forgey was more equivocal.  He called the structure "pop architecture [that] is proudly idiosyncratic", arguing that it failed as a piece of consistent architecture but succeeded in creating a unique and popular space. The overall impression, Forgey argued, was of disunity, although some elements (notably the rooftop chimneys and cupolas and the southwestern corner and western facade) worked very well together. Forgey had strong praise, however, for Thomas Jefferson Promenade and the strong sense of movement and vitality it created. Taken by itself, he said, the light tower in the fountain was also "the right object in the right place" and powerfully defined the elliptical plaza/fountain space. Even so, he found, its clean design didn't fit well with the "busyness" around it. Two years after the project opened, Forgey maintained his opinion that Washington Harbour was a "giant, busy architectural egg", but one "redeemed mightily by its fine urban design".
  Others have had varying opinions of the project. Washington Post real estate reporter John Mintz disparaged it as "pop art" architecture. J. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery of Art, derisively called it "Xanadu on the Potomac", while the author of the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. felt it was a "curious concoction of architectural motifs" and "cartoonish" — and, overall, visually staggering. Architect Richard Saul Wurman called it "bombastic" and rife with "clunky flamboyance", but acknowledged that it provided superb access to the river. Architectural historians Pamela Scott and Antoinette Josephine Lee said the architectural elements looked "forced". Architect and Catholic University of America professor Peter Blake in 1987 derisively called Washington Harbour "theme-park architecture in search of an appropriate theme", and found it a "wacky, bizarre assemblage of columns, curves, battlements, domes, turrets, fountains, bollards, bastions, crescents, terraces, gun emplacements, alleys, promenades, boulevards, piazzas and more columns and columnets, plus too many other fantasies to mention or to describe". Although Blake called the complex "more High Tack than High Tech", he found it far superior to the bland, limestone-clad, boxy structures which usually are built in the city. Speaking in 1987, GCA board member Donald Shannon called it "a disaster, a collection of junk," and denounced it for being kitschy and for catering to yuppie consumerism. Washington Post reporter Maryann Haggerty, writing in 1998, called the complex "one of the city's most architecturally distinctive buildings".
  Washington Harbour has been described as architecture that comes close to being Deconstructivist. Roger K. Lewis, a strong critic of deconstructivism, claimed the project has "mildly deconstructivist aspirations" because its architectural elements are fragmentary and arbitrarily grouped. Yet, he admits it avoids deconstructivism because it has an underlying rationale. Washington Post architectural critic Benjamin Forgey criticized the project on similar grounds. He argued that Moore's basic structural designs were "ingenious and compelling". But architectural style, Forgey said, is an afterthought and not "intrinsic" to Moore's building. Moore's state
caption: Upper floors of Washington Harbour, showing the wide variety of architectural elements Arthur Cotton Moore employed to make the complex visually interesting.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2010:09:04 21:26:31", "Image Artist": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "980", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1094", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8854", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "13", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:09:04 16:11:18", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:09:04 16:11:18", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "7", "EXIF ApertureValue": "59/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "78", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "78", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "78", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3454", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1537", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5184000/907", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "691200/119", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}